Lower Salford considers alternatives to DARE program

But that doesn’t mean Lower Salford Township Police Department wouldn’t still be teaching school children in the township about things such as drug abuse prevention, bullying and Internet safety.

The department has been using the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program to do that.

“We’re considering an alternative program,” police Chief Thomas Medwid told the Lower Salford Township Board of Supervisors at a morning work session. “Funding for DARE has obviously dried up and there’s no reason to believe it’s coming back.”

School district and state funding that each paid a portion of the costs for supplies and the salary of a school resource officer have been dropped.

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“A lot of departments are just pulling back. For us, what we do, it’s really critical to have an officer in the schools,” Medwid said.

“We enjoy a very good relationship with the school district,” he said. “Some school districts don’t want you there, but they’re happy to have us.”

School resource Officer Kim Kratz is not exclusively in the schools, but spends a lot of time there, particularly at Indian Valley Middle School, with some time also spent in Oak Ridge Elementary, Medwid said.

The programs now being considered as alternatives to DARE are based on established programs for which the department would create its own modules, he said.

“We can customize them to local issues,” Medwid said.

There would also be more freedom to adjust the amount of time spent on a given topic, he said. Another advantage would be that, instead of having programs that are just for one class, he said, there could be some that are for one class, while others are done in an assembly for more than one class or grade.

“There would be more flexibility with the scheduling and the curriculum,” Medwid said.

This year’s DARE sessions would not yet have started, he said.

The department could be ready to switch to another program this school year, he said, but if not, the DARE program would again be used.